The art of manufacturing paper pads is well known, as is decoration of the sides or edges of the pad's sheeted paper layers. Typically, the sheets of a paper pad are attached along a common edge e to keep all the paper sheets together in a cohesive unit for ease of handling. The attachment may be provided by an adhesive, such as elastic polymeric material. According to this method the adhesive is applied to a common edge of the sheets of the pad, such that individual sheets may readily be removed from the pad by pulling away from the adhesive material. According to another method known in the art, a stripe of repositionable adhesive may be applied to a portion of the underside of each sheet adjacent to one edge of the pad. The bond strength of the repositionable adhesive is sufficient to maintain the pad as a cohesive unit, but is not strong enough to prevent individual sheets from being removed from the pad.
In either construction of a note pad, it is desirable to add decoration to the sides of the pad. This decoration may be for artistic or advertising purposes to enhance the appearance and value of the note pad. It is known to decorate the sides of a note pad by applying printing and/or color to a pad's planar side surface. Applying printing and/or color to a pad's unshaped sides, however, limits decorative options to those that can be depicted in a simple plane. In another decorative method disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,494,981 to Chen, shaped dies or cutting blades are used to cut a side of a note pad's pages. Die-cutting, however, allows creation only of simple, non-complex designs, such as simple curves and a variety of angles. Die-cutting, however, cannot produce complex three-dimensional designs because it involves a linear cut, typically perpendicular to the note pad's top surface. In addition, the die that makes the cut to forms the pad's edge is a fixed shape and only useful in production of many copies of the same fixed shape.
What is needed is a note pad having complex, three-dimensional decorations and a method of producing the same. What is also need is a method of forming three-dimensional designs on the sides of note pads that can be easily modified to produce multiple designs. What is also needed is a method of forming note pads with raised relief three-dimensional designs.